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Jun, 14

It’s often the case that the top objections IT service providers (ITSPs) face when it comes to selling cloud-based services are security related. However, if Boston-based Aité Group’s survey findings are any indication, this objection is going away — at least in the financial services industry. A summary of Aité’s findings, published in a recent Forbes article, showed that 50% of those surveyed are either likely or highly likely to use private clouds in the next 24 months. The study corroborates other findings, such as a July 2013 PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP report, which indicated that 71% of financial services respondents (compared with only 18% the previous year) said they would invest more in cloud based technologies in 2014 compared with 2013.

What’s interesting about these findings is the fact that the financial services market, like healthcare, is one of the most highly regulated industries there is. Certainly, security and compliance are top priorities and this is not a case of banking executives throwing caution to the wind just to lower their IT costs. What’s also noteworthy is the fact that if IT decision makers in this market are moving forward with cloud, companies in industries with fewer restrictions should have even fewer reservations. If that turns out not to be the case, then it points to another possibility, which is that decision makers in the financial services market are being better educated about the cloud compared with their peers in other industries.